


Making the Best of It

by medjc



Series: Tumblr Requests [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Original, F/M, Fluff, Non-Consensual Haircuts, Post-Canon, Tumblr Prompt, and also alternative universe of the alternative universe, but if u just ignore the original parts u'll be fine, fiona needles him into letting her fix it so she doesn't have to keep listening to him whine, hair petting, probably won't make much sense unless you've read apae, rhys' ego gets knocked down a peg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 04:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16111301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medjc/pseuds/medjc
Summary: “Flick threatened to shave your head in your sleep on, what, four separate occasions?” she reminds him flatly. “What did you think was going to happen?”He groans, long and loud, finally giving up on his hair and flopping onto his back by the shore with enough misery that you’d think someone had just told him his dog died. “Gee, Fiona, I don’t know! That maybe they would have enough respect for my boundaries tonotactually go through with it?”Well, they didn’t. Not exactly. They just hacked his glorified mullet into something a bit more... unsightly. Which is really saying something.---In which there's an AU of the AU.





	Making the Best of It

**Author's Note:**

> Another old request I did for [Valoscope](https://valoscope.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr! She suggested an AU of my AU where they got stuck in the desert on Nona for much, MUCH longer than originally planned. As a result, everybody is in desperate need of a haircut. Some... more than others.

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” Fiona says, glancing up from the map spread out in front of her to raise an eyebrow at Rhys. “It doesn’t even look that bad.”

It does, in fact, look that bad. But considering he’s been stooped down by the water huffing and puffing at his own reflection for the past ten minutes or so, she figures she probably shouldn’t say that out loud.

Don’t get her wrong, it’s not like she plans on making a habit out of sugar coating shit just to spare his feelings, but this is getting kind of sad. He doesn’t even respond to her heckling, opting instead to shift his weight on his knees by the edge of the underground spring and continue furiously parting his hair this way and that in an attempt to make it look even marginally less hideous. Which is a moot point, she thinks; the kid did a hell of a number on it.

Fiona recrosses her legs the opposite way and leans back against the wall of the cavern, making herself a little more comfortable in the patch of sunlight spilling in through a hole in the ceiling. “I hate to say I told you so, but—”

He silences her with a look that just _screams_ murder. “Then don’t.”

It’s surprisingly difficult to take him seriously when his hair is sticking in just about every possible direction and entire chunks of it are just. Gone. Well, more difficult than it usually is, anyway. He sort of looks like a holly bush. Or maybe a really, really upset peacock.

Sighing, she crosses one arm over her chest and brings the other one up to rest her chin in her hand. “You should have let me cut it.”

“Yeah, well. You know what they say about hindsight.”

“Flick threatened to shave your head in your sleep on, what, four separate occasions?” she reminds him flatly. “What did you think was going to happen?”

He groans, long and loud, finally giving up on his hair and flopping onto his back by the shore with enough misery that you’d think someone had just told him his dog died. “Gee, Fiona, I don’t know! That maybe they would have enough respect for my boundaries to _not_ actually go through with it?”

Well, they didn’t. Not exactly. They just hacked his glorified mullet into something a bit more... unsightly. Which is really saying something. “We’re talking about the same kid who would rather drug me into unconsciousness than show even a little compassion about our circumstances right after we got zapped into the universe’s sandy ass crack by a Vault.”

Rhys heaves a very long sigh at that. “Well, I’d _hoped_.”

She shakes her head and turns back to the map at her feet, smoothing out a crease in the paper. On one hand, she understood his frustration with his hair beforehand to some extent. They’ve been trekking across this desert hellhole of a planet for months now, and her own is getting almost annoyingly long. It’s in her eyes—and in her _mouth_ —waaay more often than it’s not. And god, don’t get her started on the tangles. She would honestly kill a man for a comb. Or at least a goddamn hair tie.

But Rhys... Rhys took it the extra mile. Not one day in recent memory has gone by without him making some offhand comment about how badly he needed a haircut, or running his fingers through the strands and sighing pointedly every so often to make sure everyone was acutely aware of just how dissatisfied he was. Both she and Flick had offered to cut it for him—multiple times, in fact—but he’d refused, claiming he didn’t trust either one of them with sharp objects so close to his face. Which made sense for the kid, but she was so insulted to be included in that assertion that she had gotten the faint urge to stick a sharp object in his— well, it doesn’t really matter now. She’s over it. Mostly.

But whatever. The hit to her ego aside, he’d had ample opportunity to fix the problem, or at least take a damn hint and shut up a little. So really, if anything, he brought this on himself.

Somehow, that doesn’t stop her from feeling the tiniest bit bad when he throws an arm over his eyes and whines for so long that she starts to wonder how the hell he can even do that without, like, stopping to take a breath or anything.

“I can fix it, if you want,” she suggests. “Or, well, I can try.”

He snorts without a ton of humor. “Oh, so you can mess it up even more? I think I’m good, thanks.”

He obviously didn’t spend enough time looking at himself, because it physically could not look worse than it already does. “You know, your lack of faith in me is really starting to drive a wedge into our friendship.”

“My lack of—” he starts and then cuts himself off incredulously, dropping his arm so he can angle his head around to frown over at her. “Seriously?”

“I’m not half bad at cutting hair,” she tells him with a shrug. “I’ve been cutting Sasha’s since we were kids.”

Rhys considers her skeptically for a moment. “I still don’t trust you not to maim me.”

She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “When have I ever given you any reason to think—”

“Back before Helios,” he interrupts, sitting himself up on his elbows. “Someone found a dartboard and a bottle of rakk ale somewhere and we all decided it would be a great idea to mix the two. Ringing any bells?”

“Not... really?”

“Well, some pretty weird stuff happened that night, but let’s just say the fun ended when you accidentally missed the board and I wound up with a dart in my leg.”

Oh. Ohhh. She does... vaguely remember that. Sort of.

She doesn’t suppose now would be the best time to tell him that she hadn’t missed by accident.

“Okay, so that was one time,” Fiona concedes begrudgingly. “But it happened forever ago! Haven’t you ever heard of forgive and forget? Or turning the other cheek? Holding grudges isn’t healthy.”

“Neither is getting stabbed in the leg with a dart,” he points out.

“Oh, please. I didn’t _stab_ you. If I remember correctly, there was barely even any blood.”

He gives her a dark look. “I couldn’t walk right for a week, Fiona. A _week_.”

“Yeahhh, well. I think that had more to do with whatever you and Vaughn did when you both mysteriously disappeared for an hour and a half than the dart.”

He very obviously wants to throw something at her, and upon finding that there’s nothing else readily available, decides to tug one of his boots off and chuck it with enough force that it actually stings a little on impact.

“ _Hey_ ,” she snaps, grabbing the shoe from where it landed and almost pelting it right back at him before thinking better of it. “Watch it, jackass.”

“I’m not the jackass, jackass,” he retorts as he pushes himself up to his feet and stomps over before holding his hand out expectantly. “I want that back, by the way.”

She clutches the boot closer, doing her best to look all surly and intimidating when the state of his hair is so atrocious that she’s having trouble not completely losing her shit about it. “Nope, it’s mine now. Don’t throw things you’re not prepared to lose, Rhys. It’s just common sense.”

He looks like he wants to physically wrestle her for it, or at least voraciously argue against her logic for keeping it. But then he lets out a heavy breath and shakes his head, apparently coming to the conclusion that he’d rather keep whatever small amount of his dignity he may have left than his shoe. She scoffs up at him as he turns away to sulk back out into the main chamber of the cavern, glaring daggers at his dumb back and his dumb hair and his dumb little polka-dotted sock that’s the ugliest shade of orange she thinks she’s ever seen.

And that, by all rights, should have been the end of it. He might have pouted for a while but would eventually accept that he’d had this coming. Fiona would have given his stupid shoe back once he finally got around to apologizing for throwing it at her for no reason, and everything else would have gone back to their weird, ass-backwards standard of normal.

Except nothing with them ever goes according to plan. _Ever_.

Group morale gets about ten times worse over the next couple days. Flick had obviously been under the assumption that screwing with Rhys’ hair would knock down his ego a peg or two—at least enough to stop him from complaining about it—but his head remains just as massive as it’s always been. In fact, he goes from the annoying but occasional gripe to almost constantly lamenting the piss poor condition of his hair, usually accompanied by lots of pointed jabs and accusatory looks in the kid’s direction.

So it really comes as no great surprise when Fiona wakes up in the middle of the night to those two having a shouting match because Flick evidently decided to get creative with the scissors while he was asleep. Again.

Fiona watches the whole thing unfold, but stays out of it. She’s long since learned it’s better to just let them blow off their steam at each other than try to get involved. They wind up going at it for so long that she’s half asleep again by the time they’re done, only stirring to attention when Flick storms off with a huff and Rhys approaches the tree she’s propped up against with a pair of scissors in hand.

“Just...” He scratches at the back of his neck for a second before sighing and holding out the scissors. “Please fix it.”

She stares up at him absently for a few seconds to make him squirm, but eventually accepts the scissors from him and waves a hand impatiently until he takes it to help pull her up to her feet. “I thought you’d never ask.”

The sun went down a few days ago and the bioluminescent flora around the oasis they’re currently camped at is relatively dim, so the lighting right now isn’t the best. But Fiona has a feeling that if she tries to put this off any longer, Flick absolutely will lose their mind from Rhys’ inevitable bitching and there’s really no telling what they would do next. They might even forgo messing with his hair again altogether and skip straight to outright killing him. That’s probably a very real possibility. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t briefly considered it herself.

So she leads him over towards the little pit they’d dug out for the fire, motioning for him to sit down so she can take a look at what she has to work with. Even from first glance, she can tell correcting this isn’t going to be easy. It’s uneven all over, entire locks cut way shorter than the rest while others were left purposefully long. She runs her fingers through it, parting it different ways while she tries to figure out where the hell to even start because really, this is a mess. And nothing like cutting Sasha’s hair. So she has no idea what she’s doing.

Rhys doesn’t need to know that, though.

As she continues sweeping his hair this way and that in hopes that maybe the ability to make something acceptable out of this disaster will be magically bestowed upon her, she finds herself getting a little distracted by how soft the strands actually are. Which is probably weird. It’s a weird thing to notice. But she can’t help but _keep_ noticing it, admiring the silkiness and untangling knots and smoothing her fingers through it again and again until Rhys clears his throat a bit awkwardly.

“Are you... petting me?” he asks, craning his neck around to raise an eyebrow at her.

“What? No.” The sudden warmth in her cheeks doesn’t agree. The light is bad so he probably doesn’t notice, but she still firmly pushes at his head until he’s facing forward again anyway. “I’m just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with this. That’s all.”

“O... kay?” He’s obviously not convinced.

“It’s part of my process,” she insists defensively. “Unless you want me to just start cutting at random without a real plan.”

He shakes his head under her fingers. “No, I mean— do whatever you have to. If, uh, petting me is what it takes to fix it—”

“Not petting.”

He makes a disbelieving noise at that. “You’re kind of petting. Or tenderly caressing, if you prefer.”

Huffing, Fiona takes a step back so she can plant her hands on her hips and scowl down at him. “Do you want me to actually do something about this or are you just going to make fun of my methods?”

“Me? Making fun?” He brings a hand up to his chest in a gesture of mock offense. “I would never.”

She makes a face at him. “That’s real cute.”

“Oooh, so you think I’m _cute_ now, too.” He nods along thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

Oh, for god’s sake. That is _not_ what she meant and he knows it, dammit. She fumes silently for a second before snarking back, “Not with your hair like it is, I don’t.”

“But normally?” he teases without missing a beat, tilting his head in a way that should not be anywhere near as endearing as it is. Especially not with how hideously deformed his hair is right now.

Fiona opens her mouth to retort, but quickly realizes that there’s really no way for her to answer that without screwing herself over one way or the other, so she closes it again.

“Just... shut up,” she grumbles instead after a minute, moving around his side so she doesn’t have to look at his stupid, smug face anymore. “And sit still unless you want to lose an eye or something.”

Aside from the sporadic comment about how long she’s taking to even start and the amused looks he gives her once she does, he mostly obeys. Which she’s sure is very hard for him, given that he’s usually incapable of shutting his big mouth for longer than a few minutes at a time. But she guesses he’s willing to make the special exception for his hair. His vanity must somehow beat out his insatiable need to talk all the goddamn time, which is nothing short of a miracle.

She works carefully, slowly— so slowly that she gets tired of standing long before she’s even close to being done. But leaving it half finished isn’t an option unless she wants to have a very unhappy Rhys on her hands, so she powers through the discomfort. Flick finally comes back again just as she’s finishing up, emerging from the bushes around the clearing with fresh blood on their boots and a small corpse of... something avian in their hands. Or at least she thinks it’s avian. It has what looks like a pair of wings, but it also has pinkish-white fur, so she’s not actually sure.

Well, whatever it is, the kid tosses its body down by the fire and looks between her and Rhys a few times before nodding in Fiona’s direction.

“You did good,” they tell her before cocking their head at Rhys. “Too bad ugliness comes from within.”

“Too bad nobody asked for your opinion,” he retaliates hotly. “Go kill somebody’s parents or something.”

Flick rolls their eyes as they plop themselves down by the mystery creature’s carcass. “Nice one. I bet that took a long time to think of.”

Rhys looks like he has every intention of making some remark that would probably cause this conversation to explode into a full blown argument, but Fiona deliberately yanks at his hair to shut him up before he gets the chance.

“If either one of you says another word,” she warns, “then I’m going to kick both your asses.”

Surprisingly, that actually works for the most part. They still sort of glower petulantly at each other as Flick skins and cleans the corpse of that animal and Rhys obediently stays still so Fiona can finish trimming the hair behind his ear, but other than the strange chirping of insects she can’t see and wind blowing through the trees, they all sit in relative, peaceful silence.

She and Rhys head down towards the bank of the oasis once she’s finally done so he can take a look for himself. It’s still a little awkward and nowhere near perfect, but she gave it her best shot. And considering the haphazard wreck it was before, she thinks she did okay. At least it’s mostly even now, at any rate.

“Better?” she asks as he studies his reflection in the water and cards his fingers through his hair a couple times.

“Well,” he starts, messing with a piece that still doesn’t want to lay down completely flat. “Anything would have been better than what it was, so.”

She gives him a dubious look. “Even being bald?”

He pauses for a moment as if he has to think about it. “Okay, I guess not _anything_.”

After another minute of watching him stare at the surface of the water, Fiona stretches her arms above her head and bites back a massive yawn. “Unless you see something I missed, I’m going to head back. Some of us need sleep to function.”

“Yeah,” he says absently, like he’s too busy looking at himself to really listen to what she’s saying. Hopefully he doesn’t wind up accidentally reenacting the entire myth of Narcissus or something. Although she really wouldn’t put it past him to fall in love with his own reflection.

She’s picking her way back up the slope towards where they made camp when he suddenly calls out from behind her to get her attention, making her stop and turn around. He has to jog to catch up and stops closer than he probably means to, taking a half step back as she raises a questioning eyebrow.

“What?”

“Um,” he stammers for a few seconds before he seems to collect his thoughts. “I, uh, just wanted to say thank you. For doing this for me even after I... shrugged you off or whatever. Repeatedly.”

“I think it was more like you vehemently refused to even consider the offer, but I guess shrugging me off works too.”

She said it mostly as a joke, but now he looks so guilty that she actually feels a little bad. Or a lot bad.

...Dammit.

Sighing, she moves closer, hesitating briefly before reaching out a hand to lay her fingers across his sleeve. “I... take back what I said before, for the record. Or maybe what I didn’t say.”

He’s clearly distracted by her touching him, which is interesting, but he takes the time to blink at her a few times in confusion. “You... what?”

“I do think you’re cute,” she explains before she can change her mind. And then she laughs, trying to make it sound casual, but it comes out a lot shakier than she wanted it to. “But, um, you know. In a dorky way.”

Admitting that is... just... so humiliating. Thinking it is one thing; whatever weird and frankly inappropriate shit her subconscious comes up with on a daily basis is her business and her business only. She can revel in the security her own thoughts provide because none of it has to actually _mean_ anything since she never says it out loud.

But now he knows. It’s out there, it’s real now, and there’s a split second before Rhys registers what she said that she regrets confessing to it with every fiber of her being. But then he just— he goes _red_ , like, tomato red, blushing so hard that even the tips of his ears start turning too.

“Oh,” he says all softly. And then he gets this huge, goofy smile on his face that makes her feel somewhat like a puddle. “That’s... wow.”

Very tactfully put. Although she probably doesn’t have a lot of room to judge. Her knees feel so much like jello that she actually surprises herself when she manages to say coherently, “Just don’t let it go to your head.”

Thankfully, he keeps his mouth shut as they work their way up the rest of the incline. She can still feel him watching her, but it’s not until they get to the top that he stops her again by gently taking her by the elbow.

“I, uh,” he starts when she spins around to give him a questioning look. “I think... you’re cute too. Just— Just for the record.”

Fiona lets out a heavy breath, not having expected him to say something _quite_ like that. “Oh.”

He steps closer then, haltingly, hesitatingly, until there’s hardly any distance left between them.

“I actually think you’re...” he pauses as he searches for the words, not meeting her eyes until he huffs out a small laugh and shakes his head. “You’re, um... a lot of things.”

Vague, but it carries a certain, familiar weight to it. And it’s also pretty damn hard not to understand what he means when he’s looking at her like he’s about to kiss her, so.

She waits for it, but it doesn’t come. He brings up a hand to brush her bangs back and trail his fingers down her cheek and smooth out a few tangles in her hair, but he doesn’t kiss her. There’s something in his expression, and she can’t put her finger on what it is, exactly, but it’s saying _not yet_. Not now, but not never either. So she doesn’t feel too disappointed.

It’s still a nice moment, one of the very few they’ve shared since, well, ever. His fingers feel surprisingly good in her hair, rhythmically running through the strands and being careful not to tug too hard at any of the knots he inevitably comes across. He actually does a decent job at working through the labyrinth of tangles on her head, which makes her wonder why the hell she didn’t think of doing this before. She should ask him to finger-comb her hair more often.

...Because of the knots, obviously.

She winds up closing the remaining space between them to wrap her arms around his waist and rest the side of her head against his chest. They stay like that for a minute or two—with Rhys outright just petting her head now and Fiona enjoying it way too much to object—until he eventually clears his throat to get her attention.

“Does this mean I get my shoe back now?”

She leans back a little, blinking up at him a few times before raising a hand to pat him twice on the cheek.

“Absolutely not.”

She neglects to mention that the only reason for that is because she lost the damn thing. But let him think she’s only hanging onto it just to spite him. It’s more fun that way.


End file.
